Page 52 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2021. Opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama ▪︎ Operetta between the Two World Wars. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 5
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opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama
Photo 2: Caricature of Jacques Offenbach riding his cello and success, by André Gill (1866)
In the context of the liberated sexual politics inherent to operetta it
was also possible for Offenbach and his librettist to present, in 1868, the
first ever same-sex marriage story on the musical stage in L’île de Tulipatan.
Just for the record: it is the same year in which Karl Maria Kertbeny first
used the word ‘homosexuality’ as an antonym for ‘heterosexuality’ and
‘monosexuality.’ And it is only one year after Karl Heinrich Ulrichs had
the world’s first public coming-out in 1867 at the German lawyer’s confer-
ence in Munich, in front of 500 colleagues. He wanted to present the idea
of legally accepting marriage for ‘Urninge,’ i.e. gay people. He did not get to
that point because he was booed off the stage. Still, that day marks the be-
ginning of the modern gay rights movement. And the writers of operetta
picked this up immediately.
50
Photo 2: Caricature of Jacques Offenbach riding his cello and success, by André Gill (1866)
In the context of the liberated sexual politics inherent to operetta it
was also possible for Offenbach and his librettist to present, in 1868, the
first ever same-sex marriage story on the musical stage in L’île de Tulipatan.
Just for the record: it is the same year in which Karl Maria Kertbeny first
used the word ‘homosexuality’ as an antonym for ‘heterosexuality’ and
‘monosexuality.’ And it is only one year after Karl Heinrich Ulrichs had
the world’s first public coming-out in 1867 at the German lawyer’s confer-
ence in Munich, in front of 500 colleagues. He wanted to present the idea
of legally accepting marriage for ‘Urninge,’ i.e. gay people. He did not get to
that point because he was booed off the stage. Still, that day marks the be-
ginning of the modern gay rights movement. And the writers of operetta
picked this up immediately.
50
